What Happened Beforehand
by TheEleventhWheatley
Summary: Meet Theo Whitaker. And David Reed. And Lexi Walker, and Jeffrey Shaw. In the months leading up to the GLaDOS incident their lives are going to change in inexplicable and mysterious ways. (Prequel to Of Science and Spheres, previously Aftermath)
1. Core-Based Injury

"So what, exactly, happened?"

Theo stood opposite a very official-looking Aperture inspector with a clipboard. His name was Peter something, Theo couldn't remember the last bit.

"Do you want the truth or a more believable and less incriminating lie?" Theo tried.

Peter cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. "Let's go with the truth, shall we?"

"Alright, so there was another computer that was apparently broken, and I went to look at it. Turns out another one of those test observation idiots had turned off the computer because it had stopped responding, then he complained that he'd lost his _unsaved _files."

"So how did that end in the entire test chamber resetting to its original state?" asked Peter, seeming more curious than official now.

"I forced a recovery reboot on the computer and for some inexplicable reason the imbecile seemed to have opened the test chamber control console so when I restarted I, ah, managed to turn the entire chamber off."

"You are aware that test subject 523 was very nearly killed?"

"Holy – no, what? Oh god." Theo clapped a hand to his forehead and ran a hand through his hair. "Dear god. He's okay, isn't he?"

Peter frowned, then checked the clipboard. "He's in a medical ward with a broken leg and probably won't be walking for the next month or so."

Theo whipped round to glare at Peter, his labcoat spinning dramatically. "My god, nobody told me this! Nobody told me anything! _Why_ does nobody tell me _anything_?! How much money does he want, do you think I ought to get him flowers, should I pay his family compensation?"

And before Peter could answer any of those questions, Theo ran from the room, closing the door behind him. As he left he very nearly collided with a twenty-something curly-haired man striding confidently into the office room with Peter.

Theo apologised as quickly as he could – "Sorry, mate," – and left the young man, Professor David Reed, to his meeting with Peter Chapman.

Reed brushed himself down and stepped confidently into the office. "Hey, Pete, how's the 523 case doing?"

"Well," considered Peter, "Mr Whitaker out there seems to have had a guilt attack. Not fit for Aperture if ya ask me. I think he's ran off to the medical ward to apologise. Which is, y'know, a bit pointless. Either way, the meeting's certainly over. Have a seat. We sent a letter of apology to his family and a free turret as compensation. Whitaker hasn't worked that out yet, idiot that he is."

Reed rolled his eyes. "Just a test subject, the fool. It's not like he's known him since birth or whatever."

"Like I said, too soft for Aperture," nodded Peter. "Anyway, what did you want to see me for?"

David Reed fished around in his suitcase and retrieved a letter from the AI Department. "They want me for some Brain Mapping experiment on level 87, tomorrow morning. A Logic Core prototype, would you believe it. So what do you think? Bit suspect?"

"Oh, I dunno," said Peter. "Why don't you go along? The opportunity's got to be worth it."

* * *

"And, for that, eh, I'm, you know, sorry. Really sorry." Theo had found that it was much harder to make an apology than he'd previously believed. Then again, he'd never had to apologise for breaking somebody's leg by shutting down a test chamber in a gigantic underground science facility before.

It would seem that nobody wanted to hear his apology. The test subject looked faintly grateful but the medical staff gave him dirty looks to the point where they eventually asked him to leave. Apparently offering to pay his family was too much for them to bear, selfish lot that they were. He walked out, closed the door behind him and took a lift up to the employee dormitories, sinking into a deep and dreamless sleep. At least, he theorised, most of his guilt had been alleviated.

The next morning Professor David Reed arrived at the AI department, dressed in the usual tweed-suit-and-tie outfit he wore at every official thing. The suitcase that he never went anywhere without was clasped in his right hand as he knocked nervously on the door. A small, balding man opened the door. A nametag introduced him as Doctor Alfred North. He smiled cheerfully at Reed and invited him in. The AI department was pretty large – after all, it was the primary focus of the company currently. There were a few not-very-nice plastic chairs around a table that looked like it had been hastily assembled to provide some kind of comfort. Alfred was holding a warm mug of coffee as he pulled out a chair and sat down next to the rather bemused Reed.

"Ah, Professor," smiled Alfred, "Have a seat."

"Thanks," mumbled Reed as he sat down, "So, this Brain Mapping thing-"

"Is _nothing_ to worry about, I promise you," Alfred said, in an almost-too-reassuring tone. "We just get a quick MRI scan of your brain and that's about it. You can go back to whatever you were doing beforehand."

"Well, I was just working on the Portal Device-"

"Lovely," interrupted Alfred, "Now, if you'll just take off your jacket, the MRI machine is just round here."

Reed took it off and left it on the cheap plastic chair. It would have been deeply troubling for Reed to discover that he would never come back to pick up the jacket. It had cost him an awful lot. It didn't even have his name in.

* * *

Theo was trying to work out in which part of the facility Office G3 was in. Some bloke named Pendleton had inadvertently managed to put the office in security lockdown after forgetting his email password 73 times. He located a sign for Office G1 and decided it was a good sign, in more than one sense of the word. The formatting was actually decent for once. Following the signs to G1, he saw that down a very long corridor was G2 and probably even further than that was G3.

He sighed and started to jog down the corridor. He stopped as he noticed young, dark-haired woman staring blankly at one of the facility maps on the wall. She appeared vaguely puzzled and as Theo jogged by she stopped him. "'Scuse me," she said, in a thick American accent, "Do you know the way to Turret Manufacturing?"

Theo scanned the facility map. "Well, I don't know how you managed to get into G1 on the way to Turret Manufacturing, but it would seem you're in a different part of the facility altogether. If you head to the lobby I reckon there's a huge map up there or somebody else who actually knows the way to Turret Manufacturing, heh. No?"

The woman peered at him suspiciously. "Uh, thanks. Name's Lexi Walker, just started workin' here. See you around."

Theo wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that but he didn't get a chance because Lexi turned and hurried away. He pondered the thought curiously for a bit, then decided to go help out this Pendleton chap. He'd almost reached G3 when an electronic whizzing overhead made him look up. He hadn't realised that they'd installed management rails in these corridors.

Zooming over him was a small core with a deep red eye and narrow, vertical pupil which tapered into triangles at either end. It had got to within a few feet of Theo when there was a loud click and suddenly it was flying off the rail and colliding painfully with Theo's face before bouncing onto the floor and cheerfully yelling "Die die!"

Trying not to feel his quite possibly broken nose, a very concussed Theo swore loudly and gave the little core an almighty kick which only served to break two toes and move the little core about 20 centimetres.

The last thing he was aware of before passing out was two people running up to the little core, gabbling in panic and shouting about the fact that its vocab bank had been broken.


	2. Corrupted

Several weeks later, Theo was still hobbling awkwardly from his broken toes but other than that he was certainly feeling less concussed. Yesterday he had at least managed to sort out the G3 lockdown, but other than that he had a whole list of stuff to do and really didn't feel up to it.

So there he was, hobbling awkwardly to the café when he nearly bumped into a young man he did not recognise, who shook his hand and introduced himself.

"Theo Whitaker, isn't it?" he said, "Jeffrey Shaw, nice to meet you."

Theo was sure he'd heard of this man before. "I think I've heard of you."

"Best lawyer Aperture's got. I'm supposed to be helping you with your case against the AI Department."

"Case?"

"Yeah. Lawsuit, whatever you want to call it."

"Lawsuit? Why would I want to sue them?"

"Didn't you get injured a couple weeks ago?"

Theo considered this. "This, eh, well, it's kind of you, but I don't need to sue them, thanks. This isn't a legal advert."

Jeffrey looked at him quizzically and adjusted his tie. "I was told you were considering legal action."

"Well, I'm not, so I suggest you find whoever told you that and ask them to explain why they're putting words in my mouth."

The man looked slightly taken aback. "Well, erm, if you change your mind, then my office is on floor 42."

"Forty-two. Got it." And with that, Theo turned and continued on his way to get a cup of tea.

* * *

The little red-eyed core that had caused Theo so much trouble was currently seated on a desk, its left side open as a young man with a screwdriver rummaged around for the dislodged vocab bank inside. The damage it had sustained from landing on Theodore Whitaker's head seemed to have smashed the vocab bank and left the little core unable to speak any word except 'die'.

"Die," tried the core, as the young scientist happened upon the little black rectangle that was the vocab bank.

Alfred North was not pleased. "Why does it keep saying 'Die'? It's not going HAL-9000, is it?"

"As far as I can tell," said the young man, a Doctor Sam Wilson, "There's nothing malicious about him whatsoever. It's just that the only word he can say is 'die'."

Sam leant in further until his entire head was pretty much inside the open casing, and prodded the vocab bank. "It's smashed in two. One end is connected, but I can't find the other bit. Ah. It's stuck in the optic. Well, we're not getting that out."

"Screw it," said Alfred, "We'll just have to deem it corrupted, then. Shame to let a mind like Reed's go to waste."

"You used Reed? David Reed?" Sam asked curiously.

"Got a problem with that?" frowned Alfred, argumentatively. "We thought he'd do brilliantly in a core."

"He was Head of flippin' Research, Alf! Somebody's going to notice he's disappeared. Somebody's going to notice _one_ of the disappearances."

"Samuel, how many times do we have to go through this? Aperture's a morally questionable company, people go missing all the time. Only wimps like the Whitaker boy are going to notice and be honest, who's going to listen to him?"

Sam rolled his eyes and flagged up a notice for a corrupted core. "So will you be going to the New Year's party?"

"How about no?" replied Alfred. "Besides, there's bound to be some drunken idiot who'll make a perfect candidate for a core. What other cores are on the list?"

Sam picked up the clipboard and ran through them. "We need an energetic core, a reasoning core _and_ a tech core. Where are we going to get another 3 cores?"

"We'll find somebody," Alfred said.

* * *

It was genuinely the last thing he had to do. Genuinely.

The last thing before Theo could swan off to the Aperture Science Celebratory New Millennium Employee Gathering and spend the rest of the evening – well, not partying, Theo hated that verb – _conversing_ with his friends and colleagues.

It was genuinely the last thing he had to do, and the door was locked. Theo had been required, for some reason, to finish some important jobs on his tasklist before heading off to the party.

It was the last thing he had to do, and he couldn't do it. The door to the Observation Room overlooking Chamber 13 was locked shut, and as far as Theo was aware, accessing the stupid room itself was impossible. Some drunk idiot had spilt beer on his keyboard and needed a new one. But the door to the room was locked and so access was both theoretically and genuinely impossible.

It was the last thing, and all he needed was the key. But the caretaker was probably up somewhere in one of the party rooms, and the keys themselves were god-knows-where.

It would be a long walk to the storage room to get the key that might not even be in there, but Theo supposed that if he started now he might be back in time for midnight. It was 11pm, and it was about twenty minutes' walk and lift journey up to the storage room on level 43.

Theo sighed, and started walking.

He stepped out of the lift on level 43, and nearly knocked over a little girl running excitedly past him. "Whoah!" he yelped as the little girl stared up at him with wide eyes. "What are you doing down here?" he exclaimed. "This is a storage level!"

"Daddy said I could play in here," said the little girl. "What are _you_ doing down here?"

"I'm looking for a set of keys," he answered. "Where's your dad, anyway?"

The little girl pointed at another door. "He's having a party next door and so he sent me in here so that I wouldn't get bored. He also said not to touch anything. I'm Michelle. I'm six."

"Right," replied Theo. "I'm Theo. Nice to meet you, Michelle."

"Can I help you find the keys?" she asked, excitedly. "I won't give up, I promise."

Theo thought about it. "Maybe it would be easier if you stayed here. This storeroom's quite big and you could get lost." he lied.

"No it's not. I can walk round the whole place in 47 seconds. I counted." added Michelle, helpfully.

Not entirely sure how to deal with this determined 6-year-old, Theo caught sight of a set of keys, hanging on a desk nearby.

"Aha!" he said. "There they are. Well, I'll be off now. It was nice meeting you, Michelle."

"Thanks, Mr Theo."

"Right. Bye bye." Theo backed out into the lift and waited for the doors to close.

Eighteen minutes later, the lift arrived on level 134, and an exhausted Theo stepped out. He supposed they had a reason for putting seats in the lifts. A long walk later, and Theo found himself outside Chamber Observation. He picked up the key labelled 13, inserted it into the keyhole…

…and it didn't fit.

He swore loudly, and wondered if there was any point in trying to get another set of keys. There probably wasn't.

"Ah well," he muttered, out loud, and checked his watch. It was 11:34pm. He wondered if he would make it to the party on time, and just as he started mentally calculating the route to the main party room, a little man in an Aperture labcoat coughed politely behind him.

"Excuse me," said the balding little man. "I was looking for someone to give me a hand with something up in AI Research."

Theo didn't have much to lose. "Yeah, I'll help," he sighed, not entirely sure what he was agreeing to.

"Brilliant. Thank you." said the little man. "I'm Alfred North. We'll talk on the way."

Back in the lift, Mr North opened a folder he was carrying and showed a cluster of papers to Theo. "I'm looking for someone to give me a hand with brain mapping. For the GLaDOS."

"Brain mapping?" Theo asked, trying to juggle the mass of papers he had been given. "Isn't that something like Core Uploading?"

"Yes, pretty much," said North, "You see, we're looking for a core that can handle responsibilities involving technology, and you seemed like an ideal candidate."

"You chose _me_?"

"Well, yes. But, think of it this way, you should be honoured. You've been chosen due to your skills with technology, you should be proud."

Theo looked around. "How long will it take? Only, I've got to be at the party for midnight."

"It's, what, twenty-five to? You'll be fine. We just have to set up the MRI scanner, get a quick map of your brain and then you can be on your way. Won't take more than a few minutes. Now sign these."

* * *

Theo was sincerely regretting the British politeness in his immediate agreement to help with the Brain Mapping. The process of just setting up the MRI had taken about twenty minutes, and Theo was almost certain he wouldn't make it to the party for midnight. He laid in the MRI, listening to the mechanical drone of the scanners doing their work, and wondered just how long he had to remain still for. He wasn't even certain of the actual time.

"Right, scanning done," announced North. A few other scientists who seemed to be present chattered in agreement. "Now we just need to extrapolate your thought patterns, and we'll be done here."

"What's the time?" asked Theo.

North checked his watch, and without a deviation from his usual tone, announced "11:56pm. You'll make it in time. Chill."

Theo was always wary of people who said 'chill'.

"Right," North said, "We're just running a full scan of your brain. It'll be over any moment now."

Theo was aware of a strange itching sensation all over his skull, followed by a niggling drowsiness that seemed to slowly be taking control of his entire mind.

North's voice seemed thick and distant now. "Almost done. Poor fool's got no idea."

Something deep within his confused mind told Theo that this was a Bad Thing. Something else told this part to stop worrying and calm down. Something else said this was very hard, and before long his head was babbling with thick, distant voices that slowly faded into strange obscurity, and then everything was replaced with dull blackness.


	3. Core Report - January 2000

Somebody rapped sharply on the top of TEW-264's shell.

"Core TEW-264!" came a strangely familiar voice. A fifty-something, small balding man looked at him crossly. "What's up with you?" he demanded. "You haven't woken up for hours."

A young man with short, dark hair and a rounded face appeared next to the older man. "Morning, Tech Core! Happy New Year! My name is Sam. Eh-hem, anyway, I assume this is your first activation."

The Tech Core watched the young man silently.

"I'll take that as a yes. Right, I need you to do a few tests for me. Can you say 'apple', please?"

The Tech Core continued to watch impassively.

"Apple." Sam repeated.

"Aaaaaaapple…" said the Tech Core.

"Nice! Now I need you to move your optic around, please."

The Tech Core continued to watch impassively.

"Maybe we need to do a bit of work," suggested Sam.

* * *

Jeffrey was disheartened to find a letter on his desk pertaining to a requirement in the AI department due the next morning.

Lexi, having started her job just seven weeks ago, was surprised and excited to find that the AI department already wanted to borrow her for a Brain Mapping experiment the next morning.

* * *

Jeffrey sat in the waiting room outside the AI department and watched a young woman hurry in and sit herself in a chair next to him.

"Hi," she said, excitedly, "I'm Lexi. Lexi Walker. Nice to meet you, what's your name? How are you?"

Jeffrey, surprised at the unexpected onslaught of questions, cleared his throat and spoke. "Uh, hello. I'm Jeffrey Shaw. I'm good, thanks. You seem a bit hyper, Miss Walker."

Lexi considered this. "I'm excited. I wonder what they want to do."

As if in answer to her question, the door opened wide and Alfred North peered out. "Ah, Mr Shaw, Miss Walker, do come in. We're very pleased to have you on board with this project."

* * *

DOCTOR SAMUEL WILSON AND DOCTOR ALFRED NORTH - CORE REPORT JANUARY 2000

CORES PRODUCED THIS QUARTER:

INTELLIGENCE CORE [CORRUPTED] – COURTESY OF PROFESSOR DAVID REED, SCIENTIST

COMMENT:

More like the 'Die' Core. Little idiot managed to break himself so we can only declare him corrupted. Total failure.

- Sam

TECH CORE – COURTESY OF THEODORE WHITAKER, IT TECHNICIAN

COMMENT:

Went pretty well, although he was scared out of his mind when we first activated him. Unfortunately the GLaDOS system was able to handle the facility on her own so we had no need for him, really. We've sent him to Cube Manufacturing, hopefully he'll do well there.

- Sam

REASONING CORE [CORRUPTED] – COURTESY OF JEFFREY SHAW, LAWYER

COMMENT:

Definitely a failure. Began with 'episodes' of total insanity in which he was incapable of doing anything except screaming and shouting and throwing himself into clusters of turrets. We coaxed them out of him but unfortunately they're still too frequent to function properly. Corrupted.

- Sam

ENERGETIC CORE – COURTESY OF LEXI WALKER, TURRET MANUFACTURING OVERSEER

COMMENT:

Went alright, but far too hyper to work coherently. Would be corrupted if we had any room in the corrupted cores bin. I quit working in AI research, maybe Portal research is a better and less morally questionable alternative for me.

- Sam

PROTOCOL CORE – COURTESY OF DOCTOR SAMUEL WILSON, AI ENGINEER

COMMENT:

Well, we got the little coward in one of these cores before he could do a runner. Took some work but we managed to sedate him. Anyway, Protocol core is a success. Perhaps the only flawless core we've produced all quarter.

- Doctor Alfred North, PhD.


End file.
